It’s 1941. Babe throws like a boy, thinks for herself, and never expects to escape the poor section of her quiet Massachusetts town. Then World War II breaks out, and everything changes. Her friend Grace, married to a reporter on the local paper, fears being left alone with her infant daughter when her husband ships out; Millie, the third member of their childhood trio, now weds the boy who always refused to settle down; and Babe wonders if she should marry Claude, who even as a child could never harm a living thing. As the war rages abroad, life on the home front undergoes its own battles and victories; and when the men return, and civilian life resumes, nothing can go back to quite the way it was.
From postwar traumas to women’s rights, racial injustice to anti-Semitism, Babe, Grace, and Millie experience the dislocations, the acute pains, and the exhilaration of a society in flux. Along the way, they will learn what it means to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a fighter, and a survivor. Beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking, Next to Love is a love letter to the brave women who shaped a nation’s destiny.

Review:

Next to Love is not like any other book I've ever read. Its gut wrenching to read but by far one of the best I've read in a very long time.

The detail in this book was amazing and fit perfectly into the plot. This book is about three friends that were left behind as their husbands go off to war. This book depicts in perfect detail and opened my eyes to how it actually felt to be left like that and how their life's went as their husbands were gone off risking their life's.

I ended up falling in love with each and everyone of these characters in this story, so much so that I was crying my eyes out when anything bad happens and trust me it does. This story felt so real as I was reading it that it felt like everything that happened truly did happen. It was that powerful of a story. I loved reading each and ever word and would urge anyone to read it. It would also be a great book club story, one that would defiantly spark some great conversation.

As for the writing style of this book. I really enjoyed the way Ellen Feldman writes. She has this way of pulling you right into the book and not letting you go with her words and descriptions. I'm going to have to read more of her books.